It was that of a small, thin girl, so bloodless that her complexion was bluish white; her hair and eyes were also very light, and her dress was a faded out blue calico, that clung close to her form; her whole aspect was cold, damp, clammy, corpse-like, as she stood mutely with hanging hands before her summoner.
"For Heaven's sake, who is she?" inquired Sybil, under her breath.
"We call her Proserpine, because she was reft from the upper world and brought down here. She is my maid, my shadow, my wraith, my anything you like, that never leaves me. She it was who visited you in idleness or curiosity, I suppose. She bore the taper before you, when you came through the underground passage. More than this I cannot tell you of her, since more I do not know myself. You may go now, Proserpine. And tell old Hecate to hurry up the breakfast, as we have company this morning. And do you come and let me know when it is ready."
Sybil kept her eyes on the pallid girl to see where she would go, and she saw her slip through an almost invisible opening in the side of the rock. Then Sybil turned again to her strange entertainer, and said:
"There is something more I wish to know, if you do not mind telling me. Why were we drugged with opium that night?"
"Ha! ha! ha! We had some goods to remove from the vault. You were all in our way. We were obliged either to kill you or to drug you. So we drugged you," laughed the girl.
"Yes; we had to make sure of your taking enough to put you to sleep, so I poured the laudanum into your coffee-pot pretty freely, I tell you."
At this moment the bloodless phantom appeared again, and in the same thin, reed-like voice that sounded so far away, she announced that breakfast was ready.
"Come, then; I know you must need nourishment," said Sybil's wild hostess, rising to lead the way.
And now Sybil saw how it was that the pale girl had slipped through the almost invisible aperture, like a spirit vanishing through a solid wall; for the rocky partitions of this natural underground palace overlapped each other, leaving a passage of about one foot in width and three feet in length between the walls.
Through this they passed into a smaller cavern, which, like the larger one, had its roof and walls incrusted with pearly spars and hung with sparkling stalactites, and its floor covered with living moss.